Wouldnât that be like a drug dealer suing a fiend for non-payment?
More like âi paid you for dunking not settling for jumpersâ. Look up the Ronaldo Gaucho case with Flamengo They claimed he showed up out of shape etc and was unable to hold up his end of the deal
It just doesnât matter what is technically illegal because nobody is reviewing the contracts and there is no enforcement arm.
The payor under the contract is never gonna be âuniversity of Kentuckyâ and the standard contracts going around have been lawyered up enough to cover everybody involved.
I donât think virtually any of these players will have a signed NIL deal Before they sign their letter of intent, no. My understanding is they typically have a basic deal/parameters in place that allow the NIL to be signed right after the letter of intent is signed but almost contemporaneously. I would assume if they get less than they thought they were promised when they read the fine print, they just ask for their release and/or go into the portal.
The biggest problem is what happens when the player does really well or really poorly on the court/field. That is where it is going to get interesting. I do not believe there will be a whole lot of people standing by their contractual word and honoring their deals in situations like those. There are going to be hold outs and programs doing shady things to get rid of underachieving kids by stopping payments and all kinds of locker room issues.
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There were a lot of rumors thatâs exactly what happened with Aimaq at Texas Tech. Went into the portal ⌠and came back out to TT a few days later, happy as can be! Could be that the payor wasnât happy he wasnât playing (heâs injured) and Aimaq in turn wasnât happy that he was being pressured to play on a timeline that was not related to his health.
Except none of this is a crime. And âitâs technically against ncaa Rulesâ is not a defense to an otherwise valid contract claim.
Wouldnât this change if one sues the other for breach of contract?
Whatâs going to change? The NCAA is going to insert themselves into the case, or take some information from the case and turn it into an investigation?
Like I said, the contracts themselves wonât prove anything and will be written to âlook likeâ legit NIL though anybody who reads between the lines and thinks about the parties and whether it cools be legit NiL will be able to tell the difference.
I do not believe the NcAA will ever bring a âpay for play relatedâ case against another school again unless it 100% falls into their lap.
And breach of contract claim under the terms of the contract (âhe agreed to pay me $400k a year and failed to do so, and I complied with my ends of the bargainâ) are not going to be an ncaa rules violation.
What happens in discovery is private unless someone leaks it and the ncaa will never know. Even if there is a full blown trial it is very unlikely anything said at the trial would be a prima facia case of an ncaa violation unless one side maliciously wanted it to be that way, and even in that case I highly doubt an investigation would be begun because the source had motive to lash out and perhaps lie.
One more thought on this:
Thereâs basically three different ways programs can handle it.
You can say:
- we need to compete with the big boys and be realistic. That means using the collective and having assistant coaches buying players with the money our fans have put behind us and being really active in the portal. That is what our fans want from us - to use their money to win - and that is what we will provide. Especially now that we know there is 0% chance of ever getting in any trouble.
- we need to compete with the big boys, but our coaching staff is going to stay out of it. We know itâs going on, and itâs a reality of college sports, but I am not going to have anything to do with promises being made or money changing hands and I am not going to play guys just because they are under contract. That other stuff is out of my hands and I donât want to know anything About it. But Iâm not stopping it either, and I try to do the best I can to get excited for the kids who can really now spend a lot of money in a College town and live much larger than players used to.
- we will not encourage any of this, and will stop recruiting kids who inquire about pay for play fake nil deals. We will do everything we can to help the players with the legitimate NIL including helping them get team deals with major multinational corporations like McDonaldâs (everybody else snickers at this point like weâre offering celery sticks on Halloween night), but we will actively discourage any pay for play and root out players or coaches who breach that philosophy.
The number of high major revenue sport programs treating this like #3 is not very large. I suspect our basketball team is one of the few, and our football team is not.
I am a bit concerned it will be very difficult for Tony to get in demand transfers going forward with a market having already been set and us coming in with $0 every time.
Not that we couldnât have a rogue booster making a deal behind the scenes when he finds out we are recruiting the player.
But I would expect us to try to grow more players as opposed to relying on transfers. Because im not sure we ever get Murphy, or Gardner, or Franklin, or hauser in the current environment with lots of guys getting six figure pay for play deals and stars getting seven figures.
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I was thinking that if a civil suit went to trial (no settlement with confidentiality agreements) and the records are public, a contract becomes evidence of an NCAA violation. The civil matter is separate from an NCAA violation (and not talking about an actual crime), but one could facilitate proving the other. And, again, Iâm not really suggesting the NCAA has an appetite for pursuing these. But if there really is a pay-for-play rule and there is tangible evidence that it was brokenâŚ
The contract itself is written in a way (I am a lawyer - this is not hard and is done all the time and then everybody starts using the same form) that does not prove anything. The ncaa guidelines are so amorphous that even clauses that void a contract when player leaves x school are not going to be an issue. The only way a violation can be found is with circumstantial evidence showing what the partiesâ intent was at the time of signing and the four corners or the contract which as I said have been lawyered up.
Even if the NCAA can prove the athlete never actually did ANYTHING but play ball and got a bunch of $$$, that still Would Not be a violation if they had intended to do the very ambiguous things the contract mentions when they signed the contract.
We are talking about whether walking one foot over the line of a crosswalk in nyc is jaywalking. It MAY technically be, but it is NEVER gonna be enforced.
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Probably got feedback from Elliot on how much OLine in the portal cost.
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Thatâs pretty wild. Obvious, I guess, and football and hoops coaches have long been paid more than the University presidents. But soon it will be the hoops starting 5, plus the two reserves, plus the freshman who the boosters love but the coach wonât play, and the entire starting lineup on the football team except for the long snapper.
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Red$hirt
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Wild. I always look at these NIL reports though with a bit of suspicion because rarely are the numbers accurate, actual professional salaries are inflated and lied about so you know NILâs ar.
But that does not change the overall point that in many states the highest paid state employee will soon be a first year QB.
Also, these guys better get every penny they can now, and get it in cash because this NIL train is going to dry up, and I think itâs coming sooner than later. And donât be surprised if someone finds a way to use Title IX as a way to bring it down.
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Here comes a bad prediction that I have no confidence in: decent chance of a bill in this Congress that gives some limited antitrust exemption** that somehow actually caps or has the effect of capping NIL. Or at least allows the conferences or NCAA to put some reasonable parameters around it. I think the labor issue (are they employees?) is a bit trickier politically and may not be as ripe for a bipartisan compromise. But maybe it gets lumped in as an overall compromiseâŚ
** Telescoping some details around the likely mechanics here, but the effect is whatâs importnat.
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I think youâre on to something there. I threw out the Title IX possibility as well which also loops in Congress. Iâm not sure how it happens but Iâm willing to bet that somehow they will find a way to put a cap on NIL. No way âthe establishmentâ wants to see that much money flowing into teenagers hands without them getting their cut. And since the whole thing was haphazardly put together, it shouldnât be hard to pull the house of cards down once they get rolling.
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Fairly significant news - âInvestigators can now use circumstantial evidence (like a tip or news story) instead of on-record sourcing to presume a school violated NCAA rules. Schools can disprove the allegation or else be potentially charged.â
They shifted the burden of proof for NIL violations. NCAA alleges and school has to disprove.
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